ON cd 7 The Urban Climactericly was inavgurated,* meanwhile, has reached its maxi of humanity will occur in the developing countries, whose p double ban thae of rica. The scale and utterly dwael that vas seven times larger than id Lagos today are each 1950. China ~ usbani " added mote eit chives pope om is betwe ped counties Urban More developed counties Wb Usban, Less deel Bitoni (200m: tbls AS and A Source’ United Nations, Well Urbanite Prag: Th 200 ResonFigure 2° Third World Megacities ‘The most ce he burgeoning o new megacities spectac ated urban popul of eleven aka (25 a (RSPER) which ometer long transport 8 the important sxent population of larger than Tokyo— of Mexico Ci yoainiet and Urban avo. Gare Economy, Metro ses nM ie 6 1346 PLANET OF SLUMS 2015 ac estimate) as its fulerum. By 2020, according to an OECD study, this network of 300 cities larger than 100,000 will “have a po mparable to the US. east coast, with five cities of over one million ... fand] a total of more than 60 million nts along a strip of land 600 kilometers long, running east to west between ‘Tragically, it probably will also be the biggest cart, ure 3 Urbanization of the Gulf of Guinea 1990 50 300 ‘The langestscale posturban stractares, however, are emerging. in Fast Asia. The Peal River ( rgzhou)'* and the Yangze River 1B Tianjin corridor, are well on their way £0 becoming urban-industial meg: arable to Tokyo-Osaka, the lower Rhine, or New York China, unique amongst developing c US eastern seaboard as its templates, Created in 1983, the Shanghai Economie Zone is the biggest subnational encompassing the metropolis and five adjoining provinces with an ‘aggregate population almost as large as that of the United States. ‘These new Chinese megalopolises, according to two leadi researchers, may be only the first stage in the emergence Praia fr the tere Vs atonal Ustas Stategy and Regional fouth in China” io Gavin and demogra ascendency global flows of capital and information. ‘The price of this new urban order, however, will be increasing inequality within and between cities of differe jons, Chinese experts indeed, are currently debating whether speci ancient income-and-develops ween live. If megacities are the bi quarters of borne by faintly majority narker rePLANET OF SLUMS . by contrast, small cities and the 1990s from one quarter to one ized cities, such as, census, 35 accounting -y Guldin has emphasized, urban. as structural intyside is urbanizing in stv as well as generating epochal migrations; “Villages become more like market and ssuyg towns, and county towns and small cites become more like large cities” Indeed, in many cases, onger have to migrate to them. le remaining on 1 spot where nen's homes were cut off from the sea by a new ‘waste, and neighborin they had litte choice but to send their da hing grounds polluted by urban emphasizes, symbiotcally with the 1 psyche and spisit of the ‘rural and the urban in China, and pethaps West Aftica is a 1es may be “a significant new pat 1 ub ‘nwo wherein a dense web of transactions tes large urban surrounding regions” German architect a Sieverts proposes that this di anism, scape of regacdless of earlier urba owerer, Sieverts cconceptualizes these new conurbations as polycentric webs with neither traditional cores nor recognizable peripheries.ra that surround in this perisurban space cly to be concentrated in the i, and on the desabata e divided, with the teas and of rural tats Back to Dickens ‘The dynamics of Third W Je the next “peasant flood” ~ are expected to fe in coming decades." As a result influx, 166 Chinese la and Peter Ward, Aieica: 4.18 Thea reat does aot car in Instead iy growl tends to be Semi wben and Tage cy ba x boundaries There ist met cesses nthe 35 Magdalena Nock, Pesiod” in Deborah Bryce Pras? Ror aber 3 FinePLANET OF SLUNS JE URBAN CLIMACTERIC b triat now lives in China or 2g, Bue: suffered massive plant Elsewhere, urbanization has be Figure 5 rankings Figure 5° ts GDP: Ten Largest Cities 6 GDI as unpredictable as its specific racles, contemporary East Asian ing of per capita GDP since ing growth and urban migration,Some would argue that urbanization without industrilization is an expression of an inexorable trend: th m to delink the growth of om that of employment Burin Africa, Latin America, stand much of South Asi urbanization without growth, as we shall see late, is more obviously the legacy of a global ps restructuring of Third World jes in the 1980s ~ than any iron law of advancing technology ‘Third World urbanization, moreover, continued its breakneck pace (38 percent per annum from 1960 to 1993) throughout the locust years of the 1980s and early 1990s, in spite of falling real wages, soaring prices, urban unem This perverse urban boom surprised most experts a snomic models that predicted thar the negative feedback of urban recession would slow: or even reverse migration from the countryside, income countries, a signi produce in the short term a decl per year — st How could Lago looon and Poe in Tid Word Mie Cie London 199, p. 165 THE URDAN CLIMACTERIC an annual urbanization rate 400 percent) than the average of most European cities (2.1 percent) V growth years? Part of the secret, of course, was that leading European Afticanist, emphasizes in her summary of recent agrarian research, the 19 1990s were a generation of unprece- dented upheaval in the global countryside: (One by one national governments, gripped in debt, became subject to steuctutal adjustment programmes (SAPS) and Internat Pund (IMF) conditional packages and rural infrastructural ui the peasant “ cffort in Latin American and Afican rations wa abandoned, ps sderization” market deregultion pushed agricultural producers ly makers where middle as well at poor peasants found ‘compete, SAPS and ec represented the con vergence of the worldwide forces « polices promoring de-peas As local safery nets disappeared, poor farmers became increasingly ‘of Cambodian small peasants who sell their land and move to the city so by medical debrs.") ‘NeosLiberal Era and Bey Paso, pp 304 427 Sebuten de Ditaous, “Les Damnés de a Tere du Carsbodge,” Le Mend ple mate (Sepember 2008, p20.PLANET OF SLUMS same time, rapacious warlords and chronic civil wars, often Of debt-imposed structural wt foreign economic predators (as in the C 1g whole countrysides, Cities ~ in spite of their ‘metropolis, the Thitd ww contains many examples of capital-intensive countrysides and labor intensive ida, Khartoum, Dar-es-Salaam, Guayaquil, Aftica, and everywhere the consolidation of smal 48 See Joref Guger, on Reconsidered Daseliing Wp. 114-2 Foreword to Jasin Prancy, Debn Shi, 1800-1925: A St Gay, Da ix Larkin, of course f ine Mediterranean cou rerpare Naples large ones and the comp scale ag to sustain urbanization even when the “pull” of the city weakened by d in. As a resul urban {growth in the context of structural adjustment, currency devaluation, vitable recipe for the mass pro: yur Organization (ILO) kets in the Thitd says the UN, tions to the 12 percent 198 percent in 1993 — grew througho\ rate of 164 percent per year In the Amaze ontiers, 80 percent of city growth has been in 's fastest-growing urban making lization” synonymous." ‘The same trends ate visible everywhere in Asia, Beijing, police authorities estimate that 200,000 “floaters” (unregistered rural cP Eimiremet ad pra ondPatipaton Lan fo Latin aif Give Urbano, Deine od Glbazation of the Brian Amazon, New York 1997, 130percent of urban household sprawling kath abadi (squatter) lings:* OF the is estimated that fully 400,000 end course, is even more extreme. Africa’ wg at twice the speed of the continent’ exploding cites, le 85 percent of, mn growth between l, densely packed stu istic hope for the offical horizon, Ax the World Bank in October achieve universal in poverty in 2150 rounded by pollution, exerement, and decay, Indeed, the city-dwellers who inhabit po the ruins of the sear ears ago,Chris Aba istoric and somber report published ‘Settlements Programme (UN-Hé sgan with James Whit the long-awaited empirical the 1990s yunterpart nk’s warnings in verty would become the “most significant, osive, problem The Chalinge of Shims, a collaboration of more th researchers, integrates three now is based on synoptic case-studies of poverty, slum conditos sources of a 1 Chris Abani, Grand, 2 Aadog Si ‘was coordinated for UN-HABITAT by the Devel Unit at University College London.’ Se ‘comparative database for 237 cities worldwide created by the UN HABITAT Urban Indicators Programme fo Urban Summit And thirdly, ic data that breaks new ground by inch ‘The UN authors acknendledge a parti who ul + 5 seudsing global ic consensus on the dangers of global warming, authoritative wat Bue what is a isan equally a poverty ortedly ldwide catas ‘The first published de + writer James Hardy Vaus’s ized as a debated where human degeadation was Indian stowuelacal ape Dan Slam, p2 ng, Shon adPLANET Ms soda asthe most has human dwellings onthe ce bur Gorky was certa distsict was actually readers “deeper an ‘Moscow's notorious Khitrov Colootollah, the “lowest sink of parochial and picturesquely local places, but reformers generally agreed with Charles Booth ~ the Dr, Livingstone of outeast London ~ that all slums were characterized by an amalgam of dilapidated housing, overcrowding, disease, poverty, and vice. For nineteenth-century liberals, of course, the moral dimen: sion was decisive, and the slum was first and above all envisioned as a place where an incorrigible and feral social “residuum” rots in immoral and often riotous splendor; indeed, a vast literature titlated the iddle classes with lurid tales from the datk side of town, rhapsodized the Reverend Chapin in Humanity in the City in gloomy forests, but under the strength of gas-light, and the eyes of policemen; with war-whoops and clubs very much the same, and garments as fantastic and souls as brutal as any of their kindred at the antipodes”” Forty years later, the new US Department Labor, in the first “scientific” survey of American tenement life (The ums of Batis, Chicgn, New York, and Philadephia, 1894), sill defined back streets, especially when inhabited by a ‘The authors of The Change but otherwise preserve the classical definition of a shum, characterized The Pari Great Citic Dr Prom and What Bung Doe 1 1895, , 308 Srey Main); Baie Reble, rnd Merapli a lg Chace, bergen a ia, Carnoadge ‘Rogyard Kipling, The Giy of Dra Nigh and Other en New York 1854, p 36 Th Sams of Batra, Chie, New York, ad Philo idequate access 10 safe tion, offic “restricted Dractice a very conservative gauge of what qualifies as readers will be surprised by the UN's counter experient only 19.6 percent of urban Mexicans live in slums (it is gene conceded by local experts that almost two-thirds of Mex tion, the UN researchers estimate slum-dwellers in 2001 and more to the population of the w ‘onto the mean streets of powers Residents of sume, whe ony 6 percent of the ey population Of the developed cout ng 782 percem of (| tule nthe lea-developed coun; das equal lis td of capital of slum-dwelling, followed by agos, Cairo,PLANET OF SLUMS Figure 6 ons by Country Pakistan Banglade Indonesia th Kores Peru industry) and the former Soviet rep been bred atthe same stomach-churning and civic reported: investment. In 1993 the UN Urban Indicators Programme werty rates of 80 percent or higher ‘THE PREVAL Ms Ey ).° Likewise, the concrete-and-stee! Soviet-era of 500,000 or ving in tents called ges, few of whom manage to eat more than once a day." The poorest urban ins, however, are probal Luanda, Maputo thirds or mot required daily nutrition, highest in the world.” Not all urban poor, to be sue, live in indeed, The Challenge of Sums zeuru.® Although the two categories 1¢ number of urban poor is considerably greater: atleast one half of the world’s urban population as defined by tcl oal pe sesholds.” Approximately one quarter of urbanites (as surveyed in 1988), morcover, live in barely imaginable ate” poverty = the poorest man in Earope ould mart ely bea ich man ia Kala sed 21 WouldPLANET OF SLUNS Seattle an an incredible ineq Accurate statistics are in fact difficult to come by, because poor and slum populations are often deliberately and sometimes massively under- counted by officals. In the late 1980s, for example, Bangkok had an ial poverty rate of only 5 percent, yet surveys found nearly a quarter slums and squatter camps.” Likewise the government of Mexico claimed in the 1990s that ly one in ten urbanites was truly poor, despite uncontested UN data that showed neatly 40 percent living on less than $2 per day. Indonesian and Malaysian stati rious for disguising urban poverty. "The offical figure for Jakarta, where most researchers estimate that one quarter of the population are poor kampung dwellers, is simply absurd: ss than 5 percent: In Malaysia, geographer Jonathan Rigg complains ficial poverty ine take account of the higher cost of living” and deliberately undercounts the Chinese poor Urban ologist Erhard jeves that poverty estimates very poor city like Ibadan is as great as 739 0 1 for Manila are purposefully obfuscated, and that at least one eighth of the slum popal cd? A Slum Typology “There are probably more than 200,000 slums on exsth, ranging in pop- ulation from a few hundred to more than a million people. The five great 2 2003, 26 z Pl inthe Cie Lacie ond the Ste fr Urb 1997, pp 21, 25,26. PREVALENCE OF SLUMS a jon low-income people living in 348 square kilometers of informal housing’ Most of the poor in Lima, likewise, live in three great peripheral conos radiating from the central city; such huge spatial concentrations of urban poverty ae also common in Aftica and the Middle East. In South Asia, on the father hand, the urban poor tend to live ina much larger aumber of distinct slams more widely dispersed throughout the urban fabric in patterns with an almost fractal complexity. In Kolkata, for instance, thousands of thik bustes ~ nine hutments of five huts each, with 45: square-meter rooms shared, on average, by an incredible 13.4 people ate intermixed with a variety of In Dhaka, it probably makes more sense to consid as enclaves in an overwhelming matrix of extreme poverty Although some slums have long histories ~ Rio de Janeiro’ fist furla, Morro de Provides ded in the 1880s ~ mose outside Cairo, originated ar @ camp Tor construction workers the suburb the 1960s, Orangi/Baldia, with its mixed population of M India and Pathans from the Afghan border, was founded in 1965. E] Salvador — one of Lima's biggest hurriadas~ was established in under the sponsorship of Peru's military government, and within a few years had a population of more erywhere in the Tied Wor confusing trade pointed out, “Hot complex equation as ng cost, ality of sheker, journey to work, and sometimes, personal safery. For some people, including many pavement-dwellers, aI = say, in a produce market or train station ~ is even more impor than a roof. For others, free or neatly free land is worth epic commutes from the edge to the center, And 7(ooxtose) wstoncr He s¥d OOOO ARENT 6 seneusy pg tos) stsunc fo) sea s03> saeco oa \ourond erg arneann ood‘) EMIS a IEE), HE Jo weed seexpnos a UF nm pur suonea|p enon Toot) own 9 SMW oA Pe MoxTOne) SOB sxRO F1 PUR “OOTOSE) DEMME ‘(oom 1) edeeders ap uraf Ue MOORE) SUPERS BAIA. = 4298 000%, EC (ODODE) OD LOOM <1) OMIOIENNEAAN, SPOUT LC (ooo) vousp ep oun 510 WM pur “(og'ws) sew “(ooo'osi) “1 ap T'S sopnUr ze IAA ss URN uF payMsIOD axAK sIDINOS JO SIDS YE so emu) ome -o¢ #0 (epuery) wary “st <0 Dong meme) ESA "6 a (oom) meters ORT £0 joie) a o (ose) meu -¢1 so (90) ome zt ogee sara 21 so iqomEN) seme “9 zi (ume, ae) eg rg 14 50 (eooquy) omen °s2 zt (ones dun Sx) “OL so (ows) een emmy Fe ct (ound) 996 so (wxqanq) aN Hee “Se st Games) ney 'g v0 (ap oncom) wn st (orig) Goes -L 90 (xayen) speqsumay “12 st Go8e) mii 9 0 (Geom) aus “Ue st eur) ang 000 *¢ sv (oan) pra a9 4D “6h st sew) oper anf wos vo GoarDanrt 3 oz og) erg PCD HES TLE #0 ((qouRN) nome“ zt (eum) pO #0 ous) soy 91 Or lr onan) money mang “1 Gooner ood) ve(500g) sun oyseioyy oe oF Laan, f 4 BESER E as z eee a me ¥ Ba e eigiices é 28 3 Baa 2 5 2 SEaE Seale ek 3 i sEaR 25 FLEES 4 E gBeh seek ee ae oe ER eeaee & g gee ® 3 Fra e PeZE RS e a2ipage *Fekee fa Soeekee 2 é Rrageigd Ceege 4 FgighFa = PERaQREs tek sh g3e25 92 223 read oF FEtgeie 2 pie ek gree ga ga5% fe Bee Bo ee BB BS RE Fe} Gees Erste z ae as 8 eaaS Baa 3 gages eff Fase shbee 5 Fife 8 ° a 2 ‘ v aa huge arzay of re and settlement types. The displayed in Figuee 8 is an analytic sim es ‘global comparability (formal wersus informal, but 1 eweomers’ first decision is whether ‘of not they can afford to locate near the principal job concentrations (core versus periphen. Figure 8 A. Meteo Core squatters authorized using (@) pitate subdivisions cupid 3. Reig Camps THE PREVALENCE OF SLUMS In the First World, of course, there is an archetypal distinction besween “dk trated in derelict cores ‘with immigrant and unemployed populat ed in highrise housing on the urban outskirts, The American poor, so to speal live on Mercury; the European poor, on Neptune of Pluto, As trates, Third World slum-dwelles occupy a variety of urban orbits, with he greatest concentration in lowise peripheries. In contrast to Europe, public hous Singapore, China — eather than the rule. Somewhere between one fifth ose to the urban core, 1. Inner-City Poverty North American and European cities, there is a basic distinction |-me-down"” housing, such as Harlem brownstones and Dublin Georigans, and built-for-the-poor tenements, such as Berlin's Figure 9 Where the Poor Live” Peripheral 6 3 6 Cran Por” Pky and Pra ‘Seatamlishnan, "Un Governance is), Pei fr th Ura Tate: Global Pears ro Aras, and Jeger, Uren Derm and New Toi he Third Worl 89.2 PLANET mb anise doa eign chien Where Froer ocr, of Gusema Sis and cverrowded. Arcee Did services” Although rapidly being gentsfied or Mexico City’s seindader are still as crowded as Casa Gran tenement block housing 700 people Saclgal Sid of 1951, p 2. 48 Feng hsuan Houeh, Bing The Natt th Planing of the Cine Capital i Chichester 1995, pp 182-34 7 THE PREVALENCE OF SLUMS a classes own, Likewise, as the sich began to abandon the center of Montevideo in the 1970s and 1980s for the more attractive neighbor- hoods of the east coast, homeless people moved into abandoned homes: and derelict hotels, This suecession dynamic occurred much ca Lima: the middle and upper classes be after the large earthquake of 1940; a crackdown on street vending in 1996, however, -d a government-led reonguista of the area from the Andean working classes“ In Johannesburg, mean hil , the central business district — fonce the financial capital of the entire continent — has become a center ygand African miero-enterprises* le of an inherited housing suppl Dead, where one million poor people ce tombs as prefabricated housing components. The huge sgraveyatd, the burial site of generations of sultans and emirs, is a ‘walled urban island surrounded by congested motorways, The original century, were tombkeepers for rich Cairene Sinai and Suez ‘observes Jeffrey Nedoroscik, a researcher at the American have adapted the tombs in ereative ways to meet ing, Cenotaphs and grave markers are used as desks, Jhelves, String is hung between gravestones t0 srorues), smaller groups of squatters have Jewish cemeteries. “On a vis Rodenbeck, “I found a y ling it made convenient re: Housing and Tenants in Cental ranmon od Urboigatin 9:2 (Ccsber Owen Crnkshas, and Susan Paenll, Uniting 2 Dit Ci rama, London 200, exp chapter 7. ‘Deas At Histy of Care) ComataryPLANET OF SLUMS cooking pots, and a color TV set"” »wever, hand-me-down housing is less ‘common than tenements and purpo jousing, In colonial India, the i and sanitation o urban Indian neighborhoods went hand in hand with a 4k facto housing, policy that re who built the horribly overcrowded, unsanitary, chal 75 percent of the city’s formal housing room ental dwelling that exams a square meters; the laine i 2 dilapidated, one of six people into 15 able dwellings made out of adobe ( guincha (wood frames fi nud and straw), which dereriorate nipidly and are often dangerously unstable. One study of calones showed 85 people sharing a water tap ltrine Likewise, undl the peripheral farela boot most of Sdo Paulo's poor were traditionally housed in rented rooms inner-city tenements known as corto, half of which were built as tene ments, the other half hand-me-downs from the urban bourg Buenos Aires’ wood-and-sheetmetal inguilinata: were originally bul for poor Italian immigrants in dockland burr such as La Boca a Barracas. Since the last debt crisis, however, many former! class families have been forced out of theit private apartments and now crowd into a single nguifinato room, sharing a communal kitchen and bathroom with five or more other families. Buenos Aires aver the last cisis-tdden decade has also aequited an estima is squat- ‘ets in abandoned buildings and factories in the central Federal District ates, and Tanaka, “Sto Paulo, Brasil” Kec, Buns tr Gla Drcame Lac Cit, Chichester 1996, , 100 In sub-Saharan Afi is more of less absent. “ Edwards points out, urban core, Although renting was near universal among Afticans prior to independence, tenants lived in hostels (if single men) or township houses (if fa In older parts of uimasi, customary landownership is still common; and he tack-renting so perva based housing ‘is dominant, clan ties us compo wealthier kin Shanaian neighborhoods more econom- ther Afeican cities** shantytowns, In Hong Kong one quarter of legal additions on rooftops or filled-in airwells caged men” ‘cage’ suggested by the tend for their bed spaces to prevent theft of their belongings. The average number of residents in one of these bedspace apartments is 38.3 and the average per capita aed American big cities. In Scoul, for example, evictees from the city’s traditional squatter settlements, as well as unemployed people, have crowded into the estimated 5000 figharg which rent beds by the day and provide only ‘one toilet per 15 residents.” Some impoverished inner-city dwellers live in the air. One out of sleeps on a roof, as do an incredible Kyu He, “The Urban Poor, Rental Accomodation, Housing Plicy in Kone” Cite 19:3 (2002), pp 197-98is cooler in Caito’s than inside the tenements, but roof-dwelles are and cement plants, as well as f homelessness, with an estimated including an increasing number of families, camped on downtown streets or living furtively in parks and amongst freeway landscaping The biggest population of pavement-dw stereotype of the Indian pavement isa destitute peasant, newly arrived from the cox 7 percent) have at least one breadwinner, 70 percent have least six years, and one thitd had been evieted from 2 chawl®” Indeed, many pavement-dwellers are rickshaw men, construction laborers, and market portets — who are | competied by their jobs to live in the otherwise unaffordal the metropolis, Living in the street, however, is rarely free. As emphasizes, “even pay regular fees to 58 Asan for Housing Rights, “Baltng an Ustan Poor Peoples Cam ” Tous in the New Ward, p. 90. mas, Cala Poor Elgon 2 iy Abe Pete, Armonk (NY) Beraes, “Learning Westendoe and le (eds), Daeipmont and Cit Eye fom Deyn! Praia, Oxford THE PREVALENCE OF SLUMS v rent out wheelbarrows, borrowed from construction sites, as ersatz beds for the homeless. ce Urbanization irban poor no longer live in inner cities. on growth has been enon, if it ever was, The “horizontalization” of poor cities is often as thing as their popu pwth: Khartoum in 1988, for example, was 48 times larger in developed area than in 1955." Indeed, the suburban zones of many poor shantyrowns house two thirds of the city’s population — leading suggest that “these compounds are called ‘peri-urbaa’ but in "6 The Turkish sociologist lac point about the geekondas that surround fact, it would not be think of Istanbul as a conglomerate of such gecokonds districts with limited organic unity areas are added — inevitably 10 the outer perimeters — ‘more nodes are strung on the web in a serial manner” In the sprawling cities of the Third World, then, “periphery” is a lative, time-specific term: today’s urban edge, abutting fields, meow become part of a ast Asia, where there are significant inventories of peripheral stae-buile housing (like Beijing’ older indus- igshan, Fengtai, and Changxianc in Third World urban areas takes two principal the evocative Colombian term — Landon 203, p. 2 {6 Sivarmishnan, “Urban Governance,” in Cohen, Prag jor ae rion Paar, p29. (G7 Cate Keyder, “The Housing Mae (ed), Idle etre he lal and te Lac sal 10 Global” in Keydersurbanizacionspirtas. Both generate “Shanty scapes with lage percentages of self-built, substandard housing with poor infrastructure provision, Although pirate subdivisions are often mislabeled as squatter es, there are Fundamental differences. the posse land without sale or tie, ” peripheral land has often been discussed as the magic secret ed World urbanism: a huge unplanned subsidy to the very poor. ‘Squaiting is seldom without up-front costs, however. Squatters very ced to pay considerable politicians, gangsters, ot sites, and they may continue to pay such rey and /or votes for years. In there are itive costs of an unserviced location far from an usban center. up —as Erhard Berner rnecessatly cheaper than incremental which leads to a [phased] Squatting can sometimes become front-page political drama, Ia Latin America from the 1960s 10 the 1980s, as well as in Egypt, ‘Turkey, and South Africa at different times, squatting took the form ‘a with the support of adi governments (Pera pu repressive apparatus research team abot her novel Bayi Kristin: Tals from the ‘Tekin explains why Ista “Flower Hill” build and rebuild Schwartz, Te Evin of Law i the Baro of Cerca, Law Anges 1973, pp 6 ‘THE PREVALENCE OF SLUMS » every shanty because the authorities tear them down each morning, Only after a Homeric siege of 37 days does the go nt and allow the new guekondu to take root on a garbage -, however, ae the result of what sociolo- sist Asef Bayat, waiting about Tehran and Cairo, has encroachment of the ordinary”: the small-scale, infiltration of edge of interstitial sites. Unlike poor peas famously evoked in ” ut, according to B: ‘ceaselessly aim to expand the chised.” Suc frequently syne ‘Squatting of all varieties probably re: Southeast Asia during the 1970s. Today squatting, s, for instance, most OF the Vlas de omergn legal Bolivian and Paraguayan immigrants ~ are the rocking banks of the heavily polluted Rio de la Reconquista and Rio de Ia Matanza, “Stagnant water and untreated ewage,” writes geographer David Keeling of @ long the Rio Reconqu ie area was overrun with rats, mosquitos, flies, and other insects. pwnfeld sites are temporar: Caracas precarious ipoblshed the “nocral People” Thin Stagnant Exnomies Pots Dinase ondPLANET OF SLUMS ir way up rugged and landslide 1e developer would ever consider to be marketable real estate. Squatting: has become a wager inevitable disaster. ‘edge, although often charac- terized as squatting, actually operates through an invisible real estate ‘pirate urbanization” was earefully studied fo ink’s Rakesh Mohan and his resent these pinata subdivision selements did ar ons: the land has actully changed hands through legal he Pirate urbanization is, in effect, the privatization of squatting. In an study, housing experts Paul Baréss and Jan van der Linden characterized pirate setdements, or “substandard comme! residential subdi IRSs), as the new peoples wast to true squatters, the residents of a pirate sub: 11 have obtained either a legal or de fat ti In the bdivider is usually a speculaton, a latifuadit 0 large farmer, a rural commune (for example, a Mexican gid), or eustom- y entity (uch as a Bedouin tribe or village council). The landowners — 74 Pal Buds, “Sequencing Land Development The Paice Impia snd Meal Sxl in Pol Barer and Jan van Trento of Land Spy Stn hind War Ct, Ades 190, po. ak loving he Deeg Mera Leno rote Ci Sty (of Bas and Cal Colo, New Yors 1994, pp 152-5. as in the ease of an asentamiont in by David Keeling ~ may even encourage residents 10 organize them- selves a a land invasion in the shrewd expectation thatthe state will be reed to guarantee eventual compensation as well as infrastructural ddevelopment.™ Inthe second case of defo tenute, the land is usually state-owned, but setders have purchased « guarantee of tenure from powerful cians, tribal leaders, oF criminal cartels (for example, the Triads, who are the major informal property developers in Hong Kong)” Another ous example are Karachi's dali, whom Akhtar Hameed Khan, 3 as “private entrepreneurs who have leant the att of collaborating with and manip- lating our greedy politicians and bureauerats. With their costly patronage, the dela seeure possession of tracts of (publ protection against eviction, and obtain water and cans ‘The dalalt (he word can mean “pimp” as well dominate the Aath abads~ the pirate subdivisions lke Orangi ~ that house almost half of Karachi’ population.” Although the actual houses ate alm are generally subdivided into uniform lots with convent Bids; services are rudimentary or nonexistent, however, and the selling tenure security, non-conformity with urban development plans, and self help housing are the generic features of SCRSs”™ With appropri ate local wrinkles, this definition characterizes edge development in Mexico City, Bogor, So Paul s, Harare, Karachi, May and hundreds of other cities — including, in the Organization for 5 se Sat, Making Roa, p 114 Urban Re vert and Transport A Case Stay fro Erno std Urbanization 131 (pil 200, p. 228 reduction’ in Bandstand van der tem in Thrd Warld ite, 2-7the mid-19605.” explains urban ynal sense of the term stanbul. Setlers had to pay local strong men for the ic land. In the mid-1970s, entrepreneurs with ing. public lands in certain ing city of rack-rented poor tenants ~ full: sing according to their own nb, both the po} ing tend to romanticize sep research has been done on low-income rental markets” Lang is in fact a fundamental and di ‘wide, It isthe principal way equity (formal of informal ser people. The commodification but often in an exploitative relation informal how THE PREVALE! bsectors: d growth of distin der shantytowns, or multifamily construct st of the urban poor in We wwe a majority of residents in Ihave always Dhaka and some cers” actualy re their shacks upo also become far more common than usually recognized in cties of Latin American, Middle Eastern, and Cairo, for example, the more advantaged poor buy pirated lan« the less advantaged squat on municipal land; the poorest jowever, rent from the squatters” Likewise, 38 ur of “squat Renting has periph farmers, whl of the poor, geographer Of new rental housing Mexico City is an important ease as prostarias which sought point, Despite 4 Mod 9 ban absentee ownershi government (1976-82) al mate rates. One result of this reform has been the their property at iddle-class gen- trfication of has been the proliferation of petty landlordism. As ise S Eckstein d n her 1987 return to the cobmiz that she had first studied fifteen years earlier, some 25 r0 50 percent of the tiered housing market soc clones.” She also found “a ‘downward’ population since T was last there. increased in size.” Although some older residents rs, the newer renters had far less hope of socioeconomic mobilityinvisible and powerless of im-dwellers. In the face of redevelopment and evietion, they ate typ- ically ineligible for e«